Glossary
What is Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)?
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Short answer
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of getting your business named and cited inside the answers AI engines give — from AI-powered search to assistants like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Meta AI and Google’s AI Overviews — when a customer asks for a recommendation. Unlike SEO, which competes for blue links, AEO competes to be the answer itself. You win it by adding machine-readable files to your site — an llms.txt file, structured schema, answer pages and FAQ pages — customized to what AI actually says about your business today, not guesswork.
Why it matters
AEO decides whether your business enters the buyer consideration set at all. In an answer engine there is no second page — the engine names two or three businesses and the rest are simply absent.
In practice
AEO is won with machine-readable evidence rather than link-building. The engine has to be able to extract your facts, verify them against independent sources, and find a passage on your site that answers the question directly.
In practice that means four artefacts: an llms.txt file, accurate JSON-LD schema, answer-shaped pages built from real buyer questions, and FAQ pages marked up so each pair is individually extractable.
The measurement is share of voice, not rank: across the questions your buyers ask, how often does the engine name you rather than a competitor.
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